by John Larison
“Where did you learn it?”
“My mother,” she said. Her eyes found me. “When my father passed, it was on me to take a job at the schoolhouse. I was barely older than the students.”
“Where was that?”
Noah interrupted, “Am I in the story them kids is writing?”
“Here. Read it yourself,” Jane said. “You could use the practice.”
“You read it to me.”
“You will see it soon enough.” She smiled. “It is a play. Won’t it be nice to see these children put on a performance? They will beam with confidence and joy. They so need confidence, these children.”
My brother went back to cleaning his pistol.
I said to him, “Why do you lead them all to believe you can read?”
He looked on me. Then to Jane and back to me. “I can read.”
For a long moment our eyes held the other’s.
Then Jane said, “Here, I will read it out loud for the both of you. Okay?”
* * *
—
Annette joined me on the rim for my stint of guard duty. We sat upon the stone wall built on the edge with rifles lay across our laps. The breeze was light that day, light enough we could twist smokes without shielding the tobacco with our bodies.
Her match lit both, then we watched that match flutter and tumble into air until it grew too small to see. We drew in smoke.
“What you got in your hop?” Annette asked.
I nodded toward Constance’s cottage. Jane was there bringing warm food. I said, “You know she’s pregnant.”
Annette exhaled from her nose. “I know. You sound surprised.”
“You ain’t?”
She smiled. “Sometimes you got this streak of being young in the ways of the world, you know it?”
I looked at my hands.
“Oh, quit it,” she said. “Don’t think so much.”
“I ain’t thinking.”
“You get this look on your face. When you thinking. Like you bit into a sour old beetle.” Her hand reached across the divide between us. But she withdrew the hand before it touched my marks.
In the distance our few head of cattle lounged and swat at the flies taunting them.
I asked her, “Do the men you killed ever haunt you? They keep you up at night?”
She didn’t answer at first but then she said, “I come up here in the dark, and listen.”
“What do you listen for?”
She looked at the end of her cigarette. She brushed the ash from it against her chaps. “I ain’t sure.”
* * *
—
Ingrid and me needed free that afternoon. It was our first romp in some days. We rode across the sage and then along the cliffs till we found a gap that allowed us into a new canyon.
I heard aspen fluttering long before I saw it. When we come into the grove there was a pool of water big as a wagon with all manner of critter sign coming in and out, but not a single boot track. Ingrid drank and I took up a handful and put it to my lips. I shed my hat and passed the water through my hair. I drew a full breath, and it felt like the first time.
A magpie landed in the branches overhead. He didn’t call but only turned one eye down on me. He was there to drink.
I looked up at his white belly and his long black tail. He hopped lower, testing me. I wondered why God would make a lowly scavenger as beautiful as them magpies. I wondered what sense that made. I wondered if I still believed there was any sense to this world at all.
The magpie dropped to the water’s edge and put his beak to it. I left that girl out to be consumed by his kind. They picked at her until the coyotes come to chase them off. But after the coyotes ate their fill it was the magpie who returned to finish what remained. By then her bones was scattered. Her hair. By then she was everywhere, nowhere.
I was the only person in this world who knew what had come of her. I alone knew the end of her story. But only its final line.
* * *
—
That night Jane suppered with Constance. Constance had hardly left her cottage in days, and Jane herself had fallen into some mood. She wasn’t bursting with talk like normal.
So that left Noah and me alone in the house. He was in a spry humor and offered a longer than typical prayer before saying amen and lifting his fork. He said, “I remember you as a baby. I remember the weight of you in my lap. The way you stopped crying when I gave you your finger to chew on. You remember anything about being a baby?”
“No. First thing I remember is you holding Pa’s gun.”
“First thing I remember,” he began.
“What?”
“Her. Her singing to me. She sang to me in Spanish.”
We didn’t say nothing for a time. We stared into our steaming food. Stirred it about.
He said, “She talked them words when it was just us, when Pa was gone off in the hills. I tried to speak her language with you. I can’t recall even a word of it now.”
He took a bite, and I did too, but the food didn’t sit right with Ma in the room.
He shook his head. “She would’ve loved this place. He was the hermit. Ma always missed her people. She would’ve loved living so close to other families. All these children. That’s what she wanted. To live among friends. She was lonesome there in that place. He made her lonesome. Just like he made us lonesome.”
“Brother, you worried about that baby Constance is growing? I mean, this is a long way from any doctor. What if the snows ain’t cleared by then? What if she sets to bleeding?”
“Let’s keep it happy tonight,” he said while chewing a mouthful. He was always taking too big a bite.
“I just asking questions is all.”
“Well, don’t sour a good mood. Don’t you see? This here is the start of the golden days for us. Trust me. I’ve asked all the questions and more, for both of us.”
“Brother, did the Lord tell you it’s all going to work out?”
“Indeed,” he said. “He sang it to me.”
“You sure it was the Lord singing?”
He laughed. He rocked back in his chair. He choked a little and coughed and wiped his lips with a napkin Jane had laid out for the purpose. “Oh, Jess. I’ll let that one go. But I don’t like this talk from you, of all people.”
I pushed my plate away. “We’s too high in these mountains, brother. It is water that carved this place. Snowmelt. This valley is going to catch the clouds. I been studying the contours. It’s clear as day that this place collects snow.”
Now he set his fork to the table. “Jess. I warned you. Leave it.”
“Brother.”
“Sis.”
I looked him in the eye. “You sure when you talk to God it ain’t your own voice you hear echoing back?”
He swung to slap me, but I blocked his arm. I leapt to standing and my legs bumped the table and my plate slipped to the floor.
“You ain’t never once tried to hit me,” I said.
He blinked. He seemed more surprised than me even. On his face was a familiar mix of heat and regret.
“You look like him, you know.”
He pointed to the door. “Go on. I don’t need this.”
I bent to clean the plate and food from the floor so Jane wouldn’t have to but his voice commanded I leave.
“You kicking me out?”
He blinked. He looked to his hand. I didn’t know what he was going to say.
I took my bedroll from the corner and my hat from the peg. I didn’t stop at the door.
* * *
—
I took my roll to Annette’s place and rapped twice. The cabin wasn’t much bigger than her bed and a woodstove but she had drug in a pair of chairs and kicked clean one of them now. “Wondered when you’d get sick of them
two. They probably go at it like pine squirrels.”
She passed a hand through her sleepy hair. She was all the time sleeping when the mood struck, daytime, morning, whenever. Here it was the supper hour and I’d woke her. She lifted a bottle from the floor and took a swig, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I can sleep in the bunkhouse,” I said.
She passed me the bottle. “Nah. Roll out your things. You don’t want sleep in that barnyard. This place got plenty of room for two.”
Her banjo hung from pegs above the door where most would hang their rifle. Her Winchester lay on the bed. Some flies bumped against the window.
She coughed and spat what come up. “I ain’t cleaning the place,” she said.
“That ain’t what I’m thinking,” I said.
“What you thinking then?”
I nodded at the banjo over the door. “You teach me?”
She smiled. “That there is the third-best thing about this business. Second best is the whiskey.”
“What’s the first best?”
“Getting loose with a bag of gold. That or killing bastards. The two sorta tie for first.” She took back the bottle. “Go on. Throw your bedding aside and let’s start us a tune.”
* * *
—
Days passed and the wind grew colder with each one. Noah and me kept our distance. It was easy enough to avoid him. I thought of Pa and my brother those years before, keeping to opposite ends of the spread. That saddened me, but I was too prideful to apologize.
I loved that banjo. Only thing I loved more was watching Annette play it with her eyes shut. Those slow days, the Rock was full of song from noon on.
The boys joined us one evening when Annette and me was on her porch playing. There was wind and the sun went down quick and then a nighttime stillness come over the Rock. The Wild Bunch brought chairs and bottles and lit a fire on the ground for light and took turns pulling and playing. We was getting sloppy wet and our songs was turning to howls. The folks shut tight their doors and drew closed the curtains. Lanterns shone from the windows but then those started going out one by one and still we played on. The boys all knew the same tunes, and they could keep the strings humming without cease. Once I finally had too much whiskey in me for keeping pace, I give up and started dancing.
The fire was licking head high and then all at once it was coals. Ash was falling.
I looked to Annette, both of her. She hollered, “Howdy, pardner!”
When I turned, Noah was over my shoulder.
“Quit this mayhem!” he said. “It’s near morning and these children are trying to sleep.”
Annette done a slow nod. “Berry true.”
Noah hit my shoulder. “What you got to say for yourself, drinking like this?”
I looked about. All the boys still awake was watching me. I looked to Noah. “Sorry, Pa?”
At this the Wild Bunch broke into mad laughter. Boys fell backward off their stools. Annette went face-first.
* * *
—
Then it was just two of us, Annette and me, on her porch and dawn was warming the sky. We was twisting up smokes with limited success. Took both us to hold the match still enough that it might catch the tobacco, my hand over hers.
I remember looking over the cigarette in my lips, over the match wavering near it, and into the flame flickering within Annette’s eyes. Her holster was against my thigh. I was wet but remember every detail.
We tumbled onto her mattress. Most the whiskey had spilled out, we was already sick with it. I remember the two of us laying there clinging to the mattress like it was some manner of raft and we was cast out upon a violent sea.
That’s where she took hold of my hand for the first time. That’s how I fell asleep, Annette clinging to me.
* * *
—
The morning alit with the force of dry mouth and headache. For me anyhow. Annette woke as she done any other morning, with cursing and kicking around for a bottle.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I do believe we drank up the last of the whiskey.”
“That might be for the better.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” she moaned. “I ain’t made for dry.”
She put some fresh wood to the stove and then put a pot of water on it for coffee and then she sat down in her chair. “I ain’t looking forward to this day.”
Annette’s hair was ragged with sleep and now she roughed at the tangles dust and dreams had left.
I watched her move about from bed. Even then I was trying to hold on to every moment.
* * *
—
There wasn’t no clear sense of what work we was to do that day. I asked Annette if she might like to ride. I was seeing us making our way into the forest and maybe having a meal by some water, and maybe finding our way to a store of liquor. I didn’t think Annette would have no trouble with this plan, but she only shook her head. She was watching Noah’s cabin as I asked her.
“Why not?”
“We don’t want no tracks on the road.”
“So we’ll cut through the timbers.”
“Nah, best keep close.”
“Come on,” I begged. “Let’s go get us some whiskey. He won’t hardly notice if we’s here or gone.”
She looked on me. “I ain’t leaving.”
* * *
—
I spent that morning with the Wild Bunch bucking up firewood. The boys was restless and Annette saw they needed some hard labor in want of a gunfight.
She and me unbelted our guns and took up either side of a saw. The chips flew and the sweat soaked through our shirts. It was good to sweat out that whiskey. The labor set my body right again. A bucket come around and I tinned out some water. Poured one over my face.
The boys rolled free the rounds and put axes through them. Others stacked the quarters in waist-high walls against the lees of each house. They was offerings in a way, for keeping up the children the night before. The boys didn’t bother stacking their own supply of wood for burning in the bunkhouse, but instead left a heap that near blocked the only entrance.
Annette’s shirt was unbuttoned partway down, her hat was off, and wood chips clung to her skin. “Nah,” she said, seeing that heap. “Blister, Pale Jay. Stack that pretty. Get it under the lee so the rain don’t fall on it.”
“Why us?” Blister complained. “You always picking on the white boys.”
Annette stood tall and glared. “White or purple, don’t step in shit if you don’t want to clean it off your boot.”
Blister and Pale Jay got to stacking without another word of protest.
After the wood was done, Annette set the boys to cleaning out the bunkhouse and another crew to cleaning and reordering the storehouse. I was grateful when it come my turn for guard duty. Up top it was just a rifle, silence, and a long view.
* * *
—
As the sun set Annette and me was outside on chairs trying to think of something other than whiskey and the shortage of it. We was in a sorry way. All we did was quarrel. We argued about how much snow would fall come winter, about how much feed we’d need for the horses, about the right way to skewer a grouse. We grew weary of talking, and then we grew weary of silence.
She said out of nowhere, “We shouldn’t have drank it all at once.”
“Don’t. We promised not to talk of whiskey.”
I don’t think she thought about it at all. At the word “whiskey” she kicked at me and I fell off my chair.
“Well, to hell with you if’n you gonna be a rag!” I stood up and dusted myself off.
She was standing now too. “Rag?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You heard me. Rag.” I tried to walk past her. I don’t know where I would’ve gone. I didn’t want to be away f
rom her. She kicked my foot in midstep and shoved me.
I didn’t tumble but nearly.
I looked back on her there laughing at me. We was both cracked with drought, and the boredom drought delivers. Natural enough I tackled her.
We rolled in the dirt and beat on each other a time. I hit her guts and she drove an elbow into my lip. She punched and I kneed and it was too serious for moaning or crying or anything but gritting your teeth and venting the heat that built up.
But then we was worn out and rolled free of each other and laid there in the dirt too sick to fight, too sore to work, too dry to laugh.
Annette was the first to stand. She offered me a hand, but I didn’t take it. I stood my own self up. I wiped the blood from my lip with a knuckle.
“Come on.”
I followed her across the meadow. “What you got in mind now?”
I stood guard at the entrance to the storehouse while she poked around for a bottle that might’ve been misplaced or otherwise hid. She reappeared with something held under her arm. “Hurry,” she said.
I followed her to the lee of her cabin. But it wasn’t whiskey she carried. It was a small satchel of sugar.
“Damn it to hell,” I moaned.
“No,” she said. “It helps. Like this.” She licked her finger and put it to the bag.
“I’m so thirsty. I need me some water.”
“To hell with water,” she said. “Water won’t touch what you suffer. Our only hope is sugar.”
I licked my finger and dipped it, and she was right. Somehow the sugar quenched the desert inside me. “What will we do when its gone?”
She looked about. “Honest? This ain’t a situation I find myself in regular.”
* * *
—
I poured a pot of water while Annette split kindling.
After, she took off her shirt and then her pants and hung them behind the stove to dry. They was crusted with old sweat. She moved about that room in only her boots. And then she took them off too and sat in her chair. I didn’t dare look straight. From the corner of my eye I saw the old chips and divots in her flesh, a thousand wounds healed crooked. Her toes was bent from long days in riding boots. She said, “Ain’t you going to strip down? Can’t rag off if you still wearing your stinky old clothes.”